SAN DIEGO COUNTY : Kicking Their Way Toward Experience : Dance: They aren’t professionals, and don’t pretend to be. The new La Jolla-based ensemble of young dancers is content to have a platform on which to perform.

Patricia Hoffmann thinks she has found a niche to be filled in the local dance scene. Young dancers who are somewhere between the student and professional level need a platform on which to perform.

Hoffmann realizes she’s fighting several factors, including paltry support for home-grown dance troupes and a paucity of male dancers, but she’s got confidence in Jazzart Dance Company.

On Saturday, the newest troupe of her West Coast Ballet will debut with a pair of performances at La Jolla High School’s Parker Auditorium. Curtain times are 2:30 and 8 p.m.

But, as Hoffman, the former director of the defunct San Diego Ballet, explained in an interview last week, Jazzart harbors no lofty goals for professional status--at least for now.

“We’re just a training ground to give opportunities to choreographers and teen-age students,” she said. “Most dancers will still leave (when they mature), and the best I feel we can do is to give them experience.

That’s not really different from the other dance companies around, she said. “We’re just one of the first ones to acknowledge what we are. We’re not calling it a professional company, just a well-trained one.”

According to Hoffman’s description of the fledgling ensemble, “Jazzart is primarily a jazz group, but all our students study ballet, and some study modern and tap.”

Consequently, for Jazzart’s maiden concert, Hoffman has enlisted a strong cadre of nine choreographers to create a slate of works that will show off her aspiring dancers in all their diversity.

This something-for-everyone show will feature jazz, compliments of Los Angeles-based Jimmy Locust (whose credits include working with Michael Jackson), contemporary ballet in Mieczyslaw (Misha) Morawski’s upbeat mode, and a taste of Lorna Diamond’s brand of classical ballet.

Also on the roster is Pam Thompson’s tap-happy work, a raucous rhythm piece for the entire company, and a modern dance by Three’s Company’s Terri Shipman.

Guest artist Cameron English will wear two hats at this coming-out concert. The former member of TV’s “Fame” show and featured dancer in the film version of “A Chorus Line,” will strut his stuff in a jazzy solo. His dance designs for eight dancers are also on the program.

“There will be about 28 kids and adults in the show,” Hoffman said, “but this is definitely not a school recital. We only have three men in the company, but all the dancers are really coming along.

“We couldn’t do justice to a professional company,” she acknowledged. “This is a semiprofessional youth company, and we’re living up to that. We’ll have to impress (the public) before we can build it up any further.”